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Uallas Borgin

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Everything posted by Uallas Borgin

  1. Almost all content of Second Life is created by it's users. The hype over Second Life is over. Finished are the days when countries made virtual embassies in SL, universities had their campuses there and companies held meetings of build showrooms. Today it's all about individuals building stuff because they want to create. If you see a replica of a real life monument it's most probably made by someone who Build it out of pride for his city or country without financial or technical help Has a day job to pay rl bills Spent countless hours of free time on it, usually sacrifing sleep. Struggles to pay for the upkeep of the land where the monument is set. It's no surprise then that a lot of monuments are not in SL. As for the European Parliament, the building in Brussels is probably interesting for experts in modern architecture but it's not extraordinary. Personally I think the Berlaymont building and the residence palace are more interesting as are a few new buildings that are under construction in the European neighborhood. I can't talk about the one in Strassbourg. Although the european institutions are important, they are not an object of national pride like the Eifel Tower or the Brandenburger gate. The chances of someone taking up the task to build a replica of the European Parliament are there fore close to zero. However if you do a search for Bruxelles, you'll find a replica of the Grand Place, which is way more interesting.
  2. I would like to know what problem the OP is trying to solve. Like a lot of posters said, a floor prim, a ceiling prim and a hollow cube between them does the job. This requires almost no building skills. However, if the idea is to save prims, maybe we are looking in the wrong place. The hull of a simple skybox has a low land impact (from 3 tot 6 prims). I think what's inside matters, i.e furniture and the like. Old furniture (all prims) has a high land impact, when sculpties and mesh came, land impact of furniture went down a lot. In short I think it would be more productive to look for low impact furniture then to try and save a few prims on the outside of the skybox.
  3. Try going into a real life bar and handing out the card of your fashion store to the customers there. You'll be out there before you know it.
  4. Pages and pages of spam. Are the moderators asleep, is the forum's security so bogy that they can't block the ip of this so called indian wizard?
  5. Bumped to lift this message over 2 pages of spam.
  6. You'd better tick the physical checkmark in the edit window and see how it holds together before using it in real life, where physics are not an option but standard setting.
  7. Looking back on the history of SL and it's CEO's I think of managing a bar or a club. Some people think a bar is easy money: open a place, serve drinks, wach the money roll in for a few years, go on early retirement. The truth is that it is hard work and that you can make a lot of money if you stay on it long enough. I know this is different because the CEO's of Linden Lab did not buy the place, they were hired by the shareholders to run the place. But still I would like to continue on my analogy: Philip Rosedale had a concept for an original club and started it. After a while people came flocking in, the place was crowded money was flowing in, but money was also flowing out. Waiters had to be paid, gas, electricity... . The press was enthousiast about the place and celebreties named it their favourite hang out. More people came in. But more people meant more work of the teadious kind: Drunk customers had to be kicked out, restrooms needed more frequent cleaning, ID's had to be checked at the entrance and plumbing had to be kept working. Philip Rosedal started wondering where his dream went, this was not building a hot new place! This was housekeeping! He started to look for new projects he could start. He thought: "Why not make nice places with dim lights where people canexchange virtual hugs?" More ore less at the same time disaster struck in different ways. As any place with an original style, some people feel at home and others don't. Those that did not feel at home and came because of the hype started leaving. The number of customers dwindled. When asked why they left they started complaining: "The stairs to get there are too steep. We were hoping to date a millionaire instead of that we are dating regular people and we have to pay or own drinks. The pints of beer here don't look like the paper cups in Starbucks, we feel lost". Economic crisis hit and people spent less. Journalists decided health spa's were the new place to be and the club got less press. Never the less, the club was a still a great place to be and still could provide a decent living for anybody whoput the effort in it. A new manager was hired. Mark Kingdom came. He vowed to turn the situation around. Costs had to be cut. Personnel had to go, peanuts had to be counted lest they were distrubuted too freely. Based on the reports of customers leaving, the manager changed the club. The place was made to look more like Starbucks and beer was served in paper cups . New customers willing to pay a bit more were led to quiet (=boring)lounges where they got their own bar stool without having to interact with the regular crowd. The regular crowd was unhappy but not ready to leave because this was their only hangout. Because the new policy did not work, another manager was hired. This one said to himself "if I go a bit back to the original idea without ignoring the new customers, this place will find it's old glory and more". He was sure he could do what Philip Rosedale could not, make the club into a tool for early retirement and a lifetime of happy creative pursuits ever after. When that did not work, he quit. Now patrons are waiting for a new manager. Let's hope it's a club owner at heart. Someone who knows what makes his place special. Someone who comes to the place just for the pleasure of meeting the regular crowd and hearing their latest jokes, someone who can do basic electricity and plumbing when needed but who also has the adresses of the best technicians in town, someone who knows when to put a fresh lick of paint but also when to stop redecorating. And more importantly, someone who doesn't want to retire early because that would mean abandoning his favourite club.
  8. OK, I have some mesh outfits that look really great, specially the formal suits. But something keeps striking me as odd with mesh clothes. We, oldbies avies who started when everybody had a name and surname, went trough a whole evolution. We started with the starter shapes and skings provides by Linden Lab. Then we passed on to freebies and from there to professionally made skins and shapes. We tweaked our shapes to get the look we really wanted. Now when the really nice clothes come out in mesh, what do we do? We cover our avi from the neck to the toes in alpha layer and attach objects we can't edit. Basically we let clothes designers decide on our avi's shape. Why all that troube creating an avi when your shape changes with you clothes? Are there people who feel the same way? How do new residents handle this? Do you just take the starter shapes, changes eyes, hair and nose and let the clothes designer determine your shape?
  9. When I was playing second life intensively but still new, I had the tendency to want to right click on real persons to get their profile. I still look at buildings in real life and wonder how to reproduce them is SL but it is not confusing. Once when looking at two RL walls, one from a main building and one from an extension that was recently added, I thought "this creator did a really a sloppy job, those textures are not aligned". On mondays, when I drag myself to work for another week, I really miss to be able to teleport instead of using the subway. Come to think of it, on mondays I would like to log into RL with an alt and play some pranks at the office.
  10. SL has lots of opportunities to keep you busy, you can create inworld, go to lectures, learn langauges, role play, listen to music... but still boredom is possible. Take it as a sign you should log out and do something in the real world.
  11. I have a very limited knowledge of IP rights but I seem to remember there were 2 kinds: commercial and moral. As much as LL would like it, I did NOT give LL all the rights to my creations. I only gave the commercial rights. Even if I can't earn a single cent from my work because the commercial rights belong to LL now, I STILL Have the right to be cited and quoted as the creator or all my work. Have the right to object and stop LL from using my work for purposes that go against my religion, my morals or even my creative vision. To stop LL from mutilating my work. So basically part of the new TOS is akin to a side product of bovine farming. My creative contribution to SL has been basic building using prims and bought textures, RL photography and some textures made from RL pictures. However I will not upload any of my creations until the terms of service change. My heart goes out to all of the creators who depend on SL for part or all of their income.
  12. Second Life is filled with beautiful places and their owners have to pay monthly tier to LL or a land baron. You can give the money trough tip jars in those places or contact the owner directly. Amnesty International has some tipjars in SL. If you look well enough, you will probably find other charities. No need to complicate things.
  13. One of the previous posters already said it. Linden Lab will keep a free account indefinatly and a premium account as long as you pay the fee and tiers for land use if you own land. If you are a premium member and fail to pay, they are harsh however. I know ppl who had issues with their credit card or with the registration of that credit card at Linden Lab and they did not get acces to their main, despite long explenations to Linden Lab why the credit card did not work on Second Life or proof that credit was good and the new card valid. In that case, no way to recuperate an avi, even if you decide to abandon the premium status.
  14. Why you signed up for Second Life? I played different games before where you managed you own world, like Anno 1602, Sim City, The Settlers and strategy games that involved getting your economy to grow. I noticed I spend more time checking out the different builds, seeing what my citizens were doing instead of the actual gameplay. So I decided I might just as well go into SL and do only that, walk in a virtual world. Why you use Second Life? To relax in the evening, to meet friends I made in SL, to meet a special person who livestoo far away for us to meet in RL, to listen to artists or dj's, to have fun with my bow and sword, te visit new places in SL and meet new people. How often are you logged into Second Life a week? Almost every evening, you could say it has replaced TV for the major part of the evening. Do you prefer your Second Life to your First Life? To me there is no second life. There is a service offered by Linden Lab called Second Life, with capital "s" and "l" and a trademark sign at the end. Using that service doesn't imply changing life, just as going to the supermarket for food doesn't imply changing lives. I would like to be more like my avatar though, a muscular and toned body, living in a nice house on a hill with lots of vegetation :matte-motes-big-grin: Are your Second and First Life similar in anyway? I tried to match as close as possible my avatar's face and my own. My avatar is medium height compared to other male avatars, which is also the case in real life. The way I react in SL to situation or people is how I would react if this happened for real. There are exceptions of course, in real life I don't fly trough the airs, take the subway instead of teleport and don't jump off tall buildings. Also, just a background to you First life would be interesting to know? and maybe a link to your profile? Living in the continent in Europe, male, in my 40ies.
  15. You have resumed a lot of what was said on this forum and it's predecessor during the years you were not active.
  16. Oh my, I thought culprits went out somewhere in the 60s of the 20th century. Yes, this is a quote by Goebbels who was Hitlers spin doctor. No this is not offensive. It is just Goebbels explaining his theory on propanda. Would quoting Archimedes Law be offensive if it turned out he was a fascist or racist? As far as I see this quote doesn't justify Goebbels or his ideology. On the other hand, an anti-gay quote by a Nobel Peace Prize winner would be against TOS, and Linden Lab should take action IF that happened in SL or it's forums. It might well be that the object of this quote in that context is to make us stop and think about media and propaganda, the fact it came from Goebbels acts as a wake-up call.
  17. Do you mean your eyes, don't show, no irises? Just two colored patches where the eyes are? I had that with an old version of the Kirsteln viewer. Try using a different viewer. You can also ask other ppl how they see you. If they say you are OK, it is probably the viewer and not your avatar.
  18. I have made a lot of new and good friends on SL. I have had the pleasure of meeting some of them for real and we had a great time together. Sometimes we talk in group chat or have a party. I installed the skate ring for Christmass and I hope they can find the time to pass by and we can enjoy the season. It has been enriching on a personal level. On your question about sense of community, as one poster said, we need a definition of what you consider a community. I have a very broad spectrum of interests and don't like to define myself. I build, role play, listen to music, explore and more but don't consider myself a builder,a role player or a music lover. I don't fit any of these categories and don't look the part. Nowadays I have a lot of friends but I don't feel part of a community. Earlier in my Second Life, I was part of a community that lived on a themed sim. That community went trought the cycle so many of these communities do: - expansion -expansion + diversification with the hope the new businesses and renters will eventually cover the tier - the people who fork up the main chunk of the tier pull the plug. Community building is much harder then building with prims, scripting, animating or creating sculpties. A part form a common ideal and values it also needs someone to inspire people, a good organiser and planner, someone with a natural talent for public relations, someone who can resolve conflicts and finally builders and scripters to make the stuff. When people who have one or more of these talents find each other, magic happens. But when one or more of the key persons leave, for whatever reason, the whole thing can collapse like a house of cards. When money, time or energy is needed elswhere, Second Life will always come in second place, that's why communities in Second Life will always be vulnarable and unstable.
  19. I changed shape and skin maybe four or five time in the two years I am in SL. Going from the newbie skin over freebies to some expensive skins. I found a shape and skin I really liked, then decided the skin looked a bit pale and got the slightly more tanned version. Up until now, I have had the feeling that with each transformation my avi was becoming more "me". My avi is me, without some tweeks: extra muscle instead of extra padding and a hairline that stays in the same place instead of receding each year. I am a sucker for facial hair though, moustaches and beards. I like to try new combinations and sometimes end up buying new hair to match what's on my face. I have one pick where I am role playing a templar sergeant, wearing half long hair and a full beard when I compare it to my actual avi, short hair, moustache and goatee I have the impression that is are two different persons, but only two items changed.
  20. Pick any number you want. It doesn't matter in Second Life. People go into SL to take a break from their daily lives. What's refreshing about SL is that we can shed the labels that society has put on us. Male, female, over 40, under 40, intellectual, manual worker, it doesn't matter any more. An esteemed college professor can be a naughy elf in Second Life, the garbage collector can be a prince, the grey mouse leads men into battle. SL is the place were you can find hidden aspects of wonderful human beings. Demographics will never be able to grasp that. Genuine person to person interaction will, in it's own way. Stop worrying about age brackets and get to know the wonderful INDIVIDUALS in SL.
  21. Trust the creators in second life to take a technology and come up with uses no one ever thought about, the best and the worst. NPC in games, different kind of training devices for combat sims, models, extras to create atmosphere in role play, butlers, greeters... but also traveling salesmen, griefbots, breadable horses that break out of their enclosure and roam the grid. Also people on SL are happy to part with their money, a special amulet to keep your avi from not being a vampire, food for virtual chicken that lay eggs you can't eat, fodder for pixelhorses you can't ride and the prehistoric ancestor of the rabbit called meero. My guess is that someone will come up with the next new craze that involve collecting different variations of the same thing and injecting a regular stream of cash into it. My ideas are pandas that study kung fu, with a one in a milion chance of having one who learns all the moves from a Jackie Chan movie and chihauhuas that scavenge in sandboxes in searc of dinosaur bones.
  22. Like the name says, a skybox is a big box floating in the sky. You can put anything you want in a skybox. You can live in a house in a skybox with the bottom of the box textured like grass and the sides as a mountain scene. But you could have skyboxes that are clubs, shooting ranges, zombie infested graveyards or whatever. There are different reasons to create a skybox, privacy and less lag being the most common ones. Another common use is to separate stiles of activities that clash, for example modern houses on a medieaval themed sim or welcoming areas+ stores in role play sims.
  23. I think 3am to 3pm should be sufficient to include anything from the USA trough Europe all the way to Australia. That kind of cuts the problemn in half :matte-motes-bashful-cute-2: Off course I see this from my own perspective, having a 9 to 5 job and going into SL in the evenings instead of laying on the couch waching TV. Most people with a 9 - 5 job have their evening leisure time between 7 pm and 10 pm or midnight for SL junkies like myself. 7pm to 12 pm amounts to 10am - 3 pm for central Europe. If I got my timezones right, 7 pm to 12 pm in Australia is about 3 am to 8am on Second Life. As other posters said, you'll have to have teams working is shifts, and people you can trust with owner privileges in those shifts. You'll need capital too: your dj's and hosts will expect to be paid from the beginning while your revenues will come in only after your place gets a reputation. I don't know much about business so I can't give much advice. However, for the timezones I would recommend you see what countries you want to target and at what time the "big" evening news is at their regular tv channels. That will give you an idea of when most people have done their commute, put the kids to bed and are ready for entertainment.
  24. "But what we really see is the voice of conformity speaking" Oooh I am combining two senses: seeing and hearing. That's a style form used in poetry. Damn I am good :matte-motes-big-grin-evil:
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